Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

But most of the work will be done in Torrance, California. American Honda didn't get the word until late in the game. "Because the decision was so slow, we feel that we're behind the eight ball now," Plumb said. "We're probably four months behind." Plumb thinks they'll be ready for Daytona in March. The change allows American Honda to react more quickly to problems. Last year, Duhamel, Ben Bostrom and Jake Zemke were all bothered by clutch troubles. The problems abated somewhat toward the end of the year but were never fixed. Because the clutch shaft is an HRC part, American Honda couldn't send it out to have other clutch parts made. So the team suffered. Now it's working with various manufacturers to try to make the de-c1utcher action work bener. Other areas of concern are fuel injection. timing and ignition mapping. "Some of the stuff HRC couldn't get handled for us; on-off thronle is one of them. We're actually making that happen ourselves [with the help of Amarr Bazzaz]," Plumb said. "We do have plenty more stuff to test. Just for it to be pretty darn good out of the box, being more or less a street bike, compared to last year having a full works bike, it's not too far off without having done any development work on it yet. It's pretty close." By the end of the three-day Daytona test, Zemke was still searching for answers. "We did a lot of sitting today," Zemke said, after running only 23 laps on the finaJ day of the test. "We had a few bike problems that set us back a linle bit." Duhamel fitted the Ohlins suspension on Tuesday; Zemke tried it on Wednesday. "The last session out, the last four or five laps I had an Ohlins shock on the rear as well. The shock was pretty equal I think," Zemke said. "We just ran into a lot of problems, just running out of time today - not just today, actually the last three days. It's good because those things are out of the way now, and we know where we had issues, and those things are all solved now." The suspension, Zemke said, "you throw it in there and then you've got to try to dial in each set and then make an educated guess on is this better than the last one or not. Then you have to keep doing that process over and over. When you're sitting on pit lane, that doesn't help much." Duhamel had a more fruitful test, with an equally daunting workload. "Right now we're just spending a lot of time trying to work through this stuff, so sometimes I'd like to be more on the track and more focused on one aspect of the motorcycle, but we don't have a luxury," he said. Duhamel spent the test trying different components and not trying to impress. "We were never able to pursue it to the maximum to chase a lap time, which is not really the goal anyway here. have a better mousetrap." For what we have and the way that the lap times are, some- Zemke's 2004 crew chief, Dave McGrath, will run the dyno full time instead of traveling to the races. Merlyn Plumlee is times it was surprising to be as fast as we did. We have some good data; these guys know they have to sit down, especially AI [Ludington), and he's got to crunch a lot of info. We took a really big bite, and it seems to be going down just fine right now." Zemke's new crew chief. Trevor Can American Honda build a winning superbike? It's a question with increased relevance in the 200S season. No longer is the team the beneficiary of Honda Racing Corporation's largesse. The task of building championship-winning motorcycles now falls on it. The Honda CBR600RR that Miguel Duhamel rode to the inaugural Formula Xtreme Championship was something of a dry run. American Honda knew that it'd be on its own; it just wasn't sure when. The time is now. "Two or three years ago, we actually talked about selfreliance - in other words, doing everything ourselves, II team coordinator Ray Plumb said, "and part of the reason is budget; let's get right down to it." The FX bike was IDO-percent American Honda. "That was pretty successful as far as keeping the bike running. doing our own development, not making any major mistakes," Plumb said. '~t the same time, the learning curve was pretty steep. We're now in the third year; that's pro- gressed to the superbike. We're now doing the same thing." HRC will supply kits with chassis and engine components. and not. Dunlop is guarded about the NTech tires. At the moment, they're difficult to produce, made on two machines. Eventually, it will be seamless. "The way they're manufactured makes them work a different way," Allen said. "Structurally, they're a lot stronger and the integrity of the casing is 26 Weiller, who was Duhamel's engine technician, is going to be the data and engine management/engine tuning specialist. Through the first two tests - California Speedway and Daytona - the team has been experimenting with suspension, pining Showa against Ohlins, something that wouldn't have been allowed in the past. "Obviously, Showa's been good to us; we've used those guys for a lot of years," Plumb said. "We just think there could be some suspension gains by trying something different. Maybe Showa will improve their stuff; maybe we'll run Ohlins. We don't have that answer yet." Zemke's first impression of the new bike came at the Fontana test. "It's definitely different, but it's encouraging just to be straight out the box that we're not too far off where we were last year. It's definitely encouraging knowing that we don't have a ton of work to do. We do, in a sense, have a ton of work to do because we a lot stronger." The improvement is in the carcass, how the Kevlar and nylon fabric work the compound. "The one thing the NT tires do is they accelerate wear," Dunlop chief engineer Dave Watkins said. "They make the same compounds work hard- JANUARY 26, 2005 • CYCLE NEWS er, significantly harder." There's been a theory that the Ducati has been easier on tires than the fourcylinders. When there are five or six choices, you often see Ducati going to the low end and the four-cylinders going to the higher end of the same range. At Daytona, there's linle difference. Every year, it's a struggle of competing forces at Daytona. Motorcycles get faster and more powerful, and riders want more grip. It's not going to happen. Most important is safety. Dunlop suffered through a pair of catastrophic tire failures in the winter 2003 testing season. After the second one, in December, Mat Mladin

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